-9- [Ironchapel] (5)

Spring

I don't know that I'll ever be able to drink enough to recover from the zombie shitstorm we've come through. Fortunately we have enough booze on hand for me to test that.

I let the long list of hauling jobs and construction jobs get worked down, and cleared up some suspended wall construction jobs. With any luck we'll get the hill above the fortress walled off before any other unpleasantry arrives. In the meantime I spent some time getting to know the dwarves a little better, at which point I discovered that Mestthos Zesoddom Talin Tetthush is a god among dwarves. Looks like we'll need more slabs, though.

Finally, midway through the season a wave of 14 dwarves arrived here at the corner of Cluster and Fuck. Either no one warned them, or we just had a necrophiliac convention unload. Either way, I'm putting them to work...and keeping an eye on the (oh god, why?) cages in the dining hall. This brings us to 21 dwarves, not counting ghosts.

For some reason one of the animal caretakers got it in his head to pick a fight with Mestthos. He's lucky all he got was a shattered ankle, and some loss of function in his left lung, and a broken arm, and...bleeding Armok, why'd you do it, Ilral?

Things were going really well until mid-Felsite. A collection of goblins, lead by an elite crossbowman, and all riding one thing or another. They also brought a small army of trolls. All total, an invasion force of 71. I ordered everyone inside and threw the lever to raise the surface gates. Unfortunately not everyone made it in. I'm sorry, postal. For some you just refused to come inside. I'd like to say you put up a valiant fight, but you went down like a prom date. We'll be constructing more coffins and slabs.

By the time Summer rolled around, the trolls had managed to finish their rendition of Deliverance, and settled into milling around the gates. 15 of us remain.

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Summer

The siege rolls on. I designated a second area to keep everyone to until this blows over. That kept work moving, at least on a small scale. I spent a lot of time deliberating on making use of the atom smasher. I didn't have much of a fallback plan if any of them make it past that bridge.

Midway through the season we were still under siege. The atom smasher started to seem more reasonable all the time. The animal caretaker that was dumb enough to pick a fight with Mestthos succumbed to his wounds. It doesn't appear that Glufke tried to do much for him. "Natural selection," I believe he called it. We discovered that one of the masons was trapped on top of the wall during the siege and took a remarkable number of bolts for his trouble. We decided to go for the atom smasher and make a rescue attempt.

It begins. All but one of the trolls fell into our cage traps. Unfortunately the atom smasher wasn't fast enough to catch the last troll and he made it inside. I pointed the Mestthos cannon at it. They danced around the workshop are for some time, but eventually Mestthos triumphed. It was at this point I realized that he didn't even have a weapon. He punched that troll to death, and came away completely unscathed. Someone get this dwarf a hammer. Unfortunately the goblins saw fit to finish off the mason before they fled.

At the end of the season a human caravan arrived. It looks like it's fallen to me to be our fortress's broker. They brought a small goblin ambush with them, but the caravan guards mopped it up pretty quickly.

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Autumn

No one seems interested in hauling our crafts to the depot for trade. Instead everyone seems to be hell bent on collecting socks from the piles of goblin corpses. Eventually the traders left. Luckily we didn't really need anything from them.

Shortly after they left we got another wave of immigrants. Eight this time. Everyone spent the rest of the season cleaning up the hauling jobs. The season had mostly passed without event, until the caravan arrived...and the walking dead arrived with them. I ordered everyone back inside. Let Armok and the caravan sort them out.

The caravan brought some interesting news. Somehow, through all of this, we were promoted to a barony. With Glufke being the leader that got us through some of the worst of Ironchapel's history, he seemed like the obvious choice. While all of this was going on the necromancer behind this newest undead invasion arrived at our gates. The caravan guards ran him off, and did a remarkable job of putting down most of the shambling horrors.

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Winter

Unfortunately, again, not much trading happened. Our food stores are in pretty good shape, and I requested more food and alcohol related things, along with more equipment. Eventually we'll need to rebuild a military.

The caravan eventually left, leaving quite a mess behind. They left three zombies behind, and I sent Mestthos to solve that problem. It took him the better part of a month to track them down and clean them up, but it looks like we're safe for now. The cage traps have been reloaded, and a lot of the cleanup work has been done. It may be time to come up with a new solution for dealing with the corpses of invaders. I think we're going to wind up with a lot more of them.

I endeavored to spend the last bit of Winter finishing one or two small mining projects. Now that we've been declared a barony, it's probably time to make rooms for nobles to keep them from complaining. I didn't get very far, though. It's a big one this time. The goblins brought one of their generals. 73 invaders in total. I managed to get everyone inside safely, except for the outpot liaison, whom hadn't left yet for some reason. He didn't escape.

We're in pretty good shape for supplies. We should be able to outlast this mess. It may be time to seriously consider cutting ourselves off from the outside.

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It was pretty hairy. I honestly probably could have managed that a lot better. I should have expected an endless shitstorm of sieges and zombies. I added the screenshots in a separate folder in the zip for the save. You can grab that here.